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Archive for 2. Februar 2017

Pressed to comment about Trump’s attacks on Germany’s migrant and trade policies, and the euro, Seibert told a regular government news conference: „We are at the very beginning of the cooperation with a new American government.“

Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel on Wednesday announced plans to visit Washington and shore up ties with Germany’s closest ally outside Europe, days after a key aide to U.S. President Donald Trump launched fresh attacks on Berlin’s policies.

Gabriel said he looked forward to a „good, open and friendly“ dialogue with Rex Tillerson, confirmed as Trump’s secretary of State on Wednesday by the U.S. Senate, and said Germany was seeking answers about the new U.S. administration’s foreign policies, its relationship to the NATO alliance and other key issues. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »

In addition to increasing temperatures and rising sea levels, global climate change represents a complex exercise for the great majority of businesses, which must frame the meaning, the costs, and the business and investment opportunities associated with this ongoing phenomenon.

For a large number of companies, action on climate change is embedded in some version of a “sustainability” or “green business” program aimed at improving environmental and business performance. These initiatives are typically focused on mitigation, or the reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions, rather than on building climate resilience in the face of risks such as cyclonic winds, heat waves, flooding and storm surge, and drought. The most effective of these sustainability programs, by whatever name, manage to reduce emissions and lower the environmental footprint of companies and their supply chains, by using renewable energies such as solar and wind power, improved energy and water efficiency, recycling, and reducing waste of all types. Companies that use these programs are viewed as responsible environmental stewards, and at the same time, reap the benefits of process efficiency and lowering their costs, as illustrated in the 2013 book, Eco-Business: A Big-Brand Takeover of Sustainability. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »

Peter Singer

Peter Singer is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. His books include Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, The Ethics of What We Eat (with Jim Mason), Rethinking Life and Death, The Point of View of the Universe, co-authored with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek, The Most Good You Can Do, Famine, Affluence, and Morality, and most recently, One World Now and Ethics in the Real World. In 2013, he was named the world’s third „most influential contemporary thinker“ by the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute.

FEB 1, 2017 Project Syndicate

It took just eight days for US President Donald Trump to claim his first victims. His executive order suspending resettlement of refugees and banning immigrants from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, is the work of a deeply unethical, if not irrational, leader.

PRINCETON – When Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, I did not join those who took to the streets in protest. I thought it important to respect the democratic process, no matter how dismaying its outcome may be, and wait until the Trump administration had given us something to protest about.

It didn’t take long. Eight days after Trump took office, the first identifiable victims of his presidency were on all the major news outlets. Trump’s executive order suspending resettlement of Syrian refugees, temporarily barring new refugees regardless of where they are from, and banning all immigration from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen caused immediate harm to people already on their way to the US. The order has also prevented many more people from leaving for the US. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »

The German Chancellor has rejected comments made by a Trump adviser that Germany uses an undervalued euro to exploit trading partners.

Peter Navarro, the head of Mr Trump’s National Trade Council, told the Financial Times that the euro is a German currency in disguise.

But Mrs Merkel said Germany „has always called for the European Central Bank to pursue an independent policy“.

She added that Germany „will not influence the behaviour of the ECB“.

‚Imbalance‘

Mr Navarro also told the Financial Times that talks over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and the US were dead.

„A big obstacle to viewing TTIP as a bilateral deal is Germany, which continues to exploit other countries in the EU as well as the US with an ‚implicit Deutsche Mark‘ that is grossly undervalued,“ he told the Financial Times. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »

Annual economic survey looks at possibility of replacing messy welfare programs with a stipend paid to every Indian

India is looking at a radical idea for reducing poverty: free money for everyone—no strings attached.

The Ministry of Finance’s annual survey of the economy, released Tuesday, explores how the country might replace its various welfare programs with a universal basic income,or a uniform stipend paid to every adult and child, poor or rich. Guaranteeing all citizens enough income to cover their basic needs would promote social justice, the survey says, and empower the poor to make their own economic choices. It would also be easier to administer than India’s current antipoverty programs, which are plagued by waste, corruption and abuse.

But Arvind Subramanian, the ministry’s chief economic adviser and lead author of the economic survey, took pains to emphasize that concerns about how a universal income would be enacted—and how the government would pay—mean India is still quite far from putting the concept into practice. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »